Tuesday, 30 December 2008

So far, there has not been much to be seen. The reaction yesterday of our Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, was the familiar message – surely rendered redundant by the events of the last few days – about how all sides need to show more restraint. Th...

A project that had once been a mere gleam in the eye of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had materialised into European monetary union. Without it, the notes and coins, now taken almost for granted across so much of Europe, would not have come into circulati...

If in doubt, it's usually a good rule to go for the most pessimistic forecasts. At least that way you might get a pleasant surprise, though it is fair to add that even the gloomiest Cassandras this time last year look absurdly upbeat in the light of ...

All well and good. Well, no, actually, or at least not entirely. Past experience has tended to vindicate the saying that hard cases make bad law, and it is worth remembering in connection with this legislation that a prime reason for its adoption was...

Even the Middle East Quartet – of the UN, EU, US and Russia – will not have fully functioned until its representatives have come here. It is a moral requirement that they witness how Gaza has for so long been engineered into a hell on earth.
On 4 Nov...

Markets may "correct" over the long term but if they are only able to operate by violently oscillating through a series of ruinous overshoots and undershoots, laying waste to the lives of millions in the process, the free market could hardly be descr...

My Christmas Eve was spent in the village "Pub With No Name" It's actually called the White Horse but the sign fell down years ago and I guess the owners felt no compulsion to replace it. Over time its new name became no name at all. There we sang al...

That all Olympic gold medal-winning athletes will receive an honour is equally unsurprising, given that the Prime Minister assured us in August that they would. We do not yet know why this rule seems not to apply to Paralympians such as Nigel Murray,...

On Saturday, when the first strikes started, I was at my office. I tried to call Alaa's mobile but the network was down. My mother, who lives next door, reassured me that my wife was fine.
In fact, Alaa was not fine at all. The impact from an explosi...

Dear friends, my dears, today I am wishing you New Year greetings for the last time. Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I am retiring.
I have done the main job of my life. Russia will never return to the past. Why hold on to power for an...

Why is the blame game the most enduring of all? Is it because people and especially governments find it easier to pass responsibility for disputes than to address and resolve them, even when this means that the disputes escalate and become more entre...

More than 70 years and many thousand miles away from that doomed exploit, a 51-year-old Australian, Brian Guest, disappeared off the coast of Western Australia last weekend, apparently the victim of a shark attack. A few years ago Mr Guest, a campaig...

I refer to the growing phenomenon of people in their twenties still living with their parents. And I should know. Until recently, I was part of it.
Confirmation of this trend comes from researchers at the University of Essex, who say that Britain is ...

This will be scant consolation to existing home owners, who see the value of their biggest asset continuing to fall. But the knock-on effects could still be beneficial, bringing more mobility to the market, allowing some to move to a bigger home and ...

I like quite a few of the clichéd male pastimes: darts, pub crawls, avoiding domestic chores. Ten years ago on a summer's day my then boyfriend took me to Lord's. A one-day international, he assured me, would be "so much more exciting" than a Test ma...